Nucky and Margaret share a wine-soaked afternoon, loaded with all the historical subtext one would expect. Luciano visits Capone making for an interesting run-in with Van Alden. Sally makes the rounds for Nucky in Cuba as unrest festers. Having been laid off at the end of the summer, Young Nucky shows Eli the life they're missing. This week's installment is brought to you by writers Howard Korder, Cristine Chambers, and Terence Winter and is directed by Jake Paltrow.
Wordy Ginters: Young Nuck in horny sway to lifestyles of the rich and famous. Reduced to wandering around the hotel fondling the plumbing with his brother. Mick Jagger said it best, “you’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house. Oohew whoe who ew ew ew.” Flash forward, and Contemporary Nuck hasn’t changed. He’s wrapped himself in the lifestyle, but it doesn’t quite fit. He can’t run with Joe P and the Vanderbilts because he’s too dirty. He’s not as visceral and Mediterranean as Luciano and Capone. The existential angst. You could cut it with a statue of the Empire State Building. What does this motherfucker need to be happy? A real dad? Hang on Nuck, Sartre publishes Nausea in eight years.
Old Man Duggan: I wonder how many hours Robin Leach dedicated to pipe-and-fixture fondling. Big Pfister man. It was interesting to see Young Nucky see the life he wanted--and the dodgy pedo who could give it to him--blowing away in the breeze of the Indian Summer. It's clear at that early age that the nose-down grunt work of his father would not suffice. I don't think anyone knows what would have actually made Nucky happy, and that especially includes Nucky. For all of this desire for success, nothing is going to fill that hole that he dug up inside when he got in bed with the Commodore. It's strange, though. Nucky's real desire seems to have been for a proper family. He cries at the table at seeing a proper family, complete with recitations of Keats at the table. His choices rendered that impossible.
WG: Scotch and Rum don’t mix is the smuggest god damn line I’ve ever heard.
OMD: That's those County Wexford fucks for you.
WG: The reunion with Margaret hit me odd. Relegating her to second team plot status last season meant that we lost some of the punch, immediacy, and history of their relationship. At least I did. The apparent return to the varsity line-up didn’t mean as much to me as it should have.
OMD: I actually dug it. She cut loose a bit. Even she, at this point is at ease drinking. I mean it has certainly been a while, but they slipped back into familiarity pretty damn quickly, and with drink came a looser rapport with Nucky, freely calling him a bastard but without malice. Her "why does everyone assume?" bit when Nucky asked if she'd been sleeping with Rothstein was funny. The "Partners in crime" toast was a nice touch. I like that he saw in Margaret what he'd wanted in himself. Self-made success story, even if she got into a bit of trouble.
WG: Evidently the Kennedy’s have game? Straight up PUA. Only took a few minutes chit chatting in the sitting room for Joe P to work it. Did you see the way Margaret was suggestively bobbing her leg? They were swapping Irish landmarks and talking in Gaelic like long lost lovers. Could Nucky be any more on the outside looking in?
OMD: It's sort of where he lives, isn't it?
WG: If you haven’t figured it out yet, Capone is a goddamn loose cannon. Real loose. Watching his own press clippings. Big mistake, if I’m to believe everything I read in the sprots media. I love how the Capone scenes are a completely different world. Barnyard, Animal House, and abattoir.
OMD: Goddamn Italian Wallace Beery, who of course was Noah Beery Jr.'s similarly amiable uncle. I don't know if Capone--Stephen Graham or real-life Capone--could have pulled off being Jim Rockford's rig-obsessed pop. Obviously, Capone's game is for a different time than the one Luciano is ushering in. They're old friends, but clearly Capone's loyalties lie with Nucky, and why wouldn't they given their history?
WG: Thank God Van Alden Mueller escaped Capone’s impromptu execution. Isn’t it about time we get all slack-jawed and goofy about how awesome Michael Shannon is? Mumbling with Capone’s .45 in his mouth. Coolly finding the right words to defuse the situation. And then stiffly walking out, calm but somehow rattled--how can you tell when Van Alden Mueller is rattled? something in the eyes? the usual look on his face like he’s just taken a big swig of sour milk gets slightly more aggrieved?--admitting very politely that he may have soiled his sensible pants? How many series can pull off a scene like that?
OMD: "I get the feeling my boss doesn't like me." Using Al's vanity, even in a possible blackout, was pretty fucking brilliant. That scene was outstanding. I do wonder if Van Alden Mueller doesn't become the key for the case for the prosecution.
WG: Sally Wheet, what a bad ass. She may have been a good match for Joe P. I got tired on her behalf. The bank clown hitting on her with the purple prose. Doyle trying a similar shtick over the phone. I thought for sure she’d talk her way out of that situation with the soldiers. Of course she created a skirmish and ends up with one of the soldier’s guns. Remember when she ruffed up Nucky last season? I hated to see her dead along the roadside. She deserved a more glorious send off. Put her in a boat, point it towards the Florida Keys, and set it alight with Molotov cocktails lobbed from the dock.
OMD: Apparently Mickey Doyle is into Quaker poetry in the style of John Greenleaf Whittier. Wouldn't have pegged him for that. As for Sally, a drunk's Viking funeral would be the appropriate send-off according to Miss Manners. That banker was a putz. So the soldiers were putting down the Gibara Rebellion of 1931 where 40 revolutionaries thought that they could overthrow Machado from Holguin. It at least looked like the officer who stopped Sally may have been one of the three army guys outside of the bank president's office. With the Bacardi family having to go into exile roughly thirty years later on account of Castro nationalizing the company, the resentment amongst The People should probably come as no surprise. I guess all it takes is one dipshit with a twitch in his trigger finger. I would posit that since the officer only chided the dunce for shooting an American out in the open, not necessarily for shooting her, that it was probably in the cards to begin with, what with the Army in the wings at the bank. I don't know, however, how they would have known precisely where she'd have been at that hour. My guess is Don Maxime Ronis is pissing off the wrong people in Cuba.
Just as each season before it, Season Three kicks off as the New Year is turning over. Opulent parties. Stages being set. Appearances being kept. This time a significant amount of time has passed--roughly a year and a half if I'm not mistaken, as the calendars are about to be turned over to 1923, whereas Season Two started in January of 1921. Things have changed. Nucky is a philanthropist. "Friends" Manny Horvitz and Mickey Doyle are in league with one another. Van Alden is now George Mueller, door-to-door iron salesman in Capone's backyard. Gillian is now a madame at the Commodore's repurposed estate, The Artemis Club, with Harrow as their caretaker.
Old Man Duggan: So here we are, basically at square one. "Resolution" feels very much like the pilot episode. Nucky is on top of the world, throwing a big
soiree. Since so much time has passed since last we saw our Atlantic City friends, it really feels as though this episode is setting up all the pieces on the chess board. Let's start in the Chicagoland area. So, Dean O'Banion's a smug mick prick if I ever did see one. It's rare that I'm rooting for it, but holy shit do I want Capone to empty a full magazine into O'Banion's chest. Unfortunately this won't happen until November 10th of 1924, so we've got 23 television months to wait for this to happen.
Wordy Ginters: O'Banion's got some brass. You've got to give him that. What makes Boardwalk interesting is how they color outside the lines a little bit on well-worn gangster archetypes. Foolhardy jackassery like O'Banion displays is usually a prelim for getting beaten with ball bats and rolled into a remote corn field grave. It was bracing to see him above ground the rest of the way.
"Philanthropy" run amok
OMD: If there's a drawback of intently watching a show with such a rich historical background, it's that you can figure out when characters die pretty easily. Dean, or as the papers would come to call him, Dion O'Banion is about to set off the Chicago bootlegging wars. O'Banion got his start in the Market Street Gang, who were put to work first by the Chicago Tribune to beat newsstand owners who wouldn't put out the paper. They were made a more lucrative offer to do the work for the Chicago Examiner run by Moses Annenberg, who would be the channel through which they would meet Ward Bosses. Moses, of course, was the father of Walter Annenberg, who would unsuccessfully sue the Barnes Foundation and then use his own newspaper (the Philadelphia Inquirer) as a means by which to attack over the private art collection entrusted to the foundation as was all elucidated in The Art of the Steal. Of course, the Annenberg Foundation (and The Pew Charitable Trust) would eventually get its way, but it would seem that the Annenbergs may have been philanthropists in a way not unlike Nucky Thompson.
Nelson, Nelson, Nelson. How far you've fallen. Pitiably strolling from Cicero door to Cicero door peddling electric irons for a pittance while living in a sad little apartment with Wife Number Two with your bastard and your newer, proper child--well as proper a child as the devoutly troubled Nelson Van Alden can have post-divorce. Terence Winter sure was cagey with our reintroduction to Van Alden, playing against our expectations that he was there to bust Mr. Posner. But no,
he's 1924 equivalent of the telemarketer--the door-to-door salesman. Furthermore, he's reciting Émile Coué's mantra in an almost predictable effort to improve himself through optimistic autosuggestion. It's all so goddamn sad. I just hope that Michael Shannon has plenty to do this season. Of all the great actors on the show, he's the one I want to see ply his trade the most. Do you think Mr. Gulliver gets drowned while being baptized?
WG: Émile Coué. Well done. I thought maybe he was mainlining some early Dale Carnegie. Van Alden, ahem, George Mueller, seems in danger of sinking balls deep into the faux business gospel of salesmanship as much as he was previously immersed in the Old Testament. Trading one set of values for another. I'll leave it to others to discern whether or not the Bible is also a sales book. Gulliver deserves death by baptism as much as O'Bannion deserves moozarella pounded in his arse. Which is to say, they both deserve it richly. Can you imagine buying anything the glowering Van Alden-Mueller would have to offer should he darken your door? My first inclination would be to call the SWAT team.
OMD: Thankfully Tony Robbins, or worse L. Ron Hubbard, isn't around to really do some damage to our wayward hero. His is a tortured soul, and if we're to judge by his recitation of the Coue method, it seems as though he'll latch onto any credo if it can deliver him to salvation. Could you imagine how irritating he'd be if The Secret or The Purpose Driven Life were big in his day?
Speaking of sad and moving back to Jersey, poor Richard Harrow. Our
most sensitive character (well, duality obviously plays a role in Harrow's personality) sits watching over his best friend's child while his best friend's terribly fucked up and boundary oblivious mother tries to erase all traces of the boy's dead mother, the only woman who truly understood him in his mangled state. At least he exacted Angela's revenge. Now he'll have to rot under Gillian's roof unless
Winter & Co. have more exciting plans for him. I, for one, hope to see Harrow and Owen Slater taking it to Nucky's new foil Gyp Rosetti in a most medieval fashion.
WG: As much as I hate to see Manny go, Harrow's Angela revenge was a nice unexpected touch. I wouldn't mind seeing him go rogue. Tough to imagine him throwing in with Nucky. Harrow is the most interesting character on the show. Regarding the duality you mention, he's often the most gentle and most remorseless character in the course of the same episode. I can't imagine anyone else tenderly taking Jimmy's son under his wing like Harrow does. Jesus, the look on the carny barker's face when he was boring holes in the Great Plains Shooting Gallery was priceless. He was going to score a wagon next, which was needed to tote the bounty of toys and trinkets he had already won. Behind that Tin Mask is a complex motherfucker with an eagle eye for targets.
Two swallows doth not a summer make
OMD: But can we not dream of a world that sees Harrow and The Duke of Crowborough meting out Jersey justice side by side?
WG: Christ. The Downton Abbey connection. I totally missed that one. You can see a little bit of the Duke of Crowborough bleeding through in his dealings with Margaret. A lascivious twinkle in his eye.
OMD: Perhaps the biggest question I had about the new season was what state would the Thompsons' marriage be in? The quick answer would seem to be: filled with strife. As soon as the dust from the party has settled and the two are alone, it is clear that theirs is a marriage now consisting of going through the motions. I suppose such was to be expected given her charitable donation of all the Turnpike land to the archdiocese. I can't say I blame Nucky for being livid. Her sad, guilt-ridden existence has always been the most irritating part of her character to me. Don't get me wrong, Kelly MacDonald is fucking fantastic, but her Catholic upbringing has left her wrought with guilt. Part of me is surprised she's still alive.
WG: I'm with you on that one. My beef is that the royal couple is a little too one-noted. Margaret in perpetual Catholic angst. Nucky as an ever-so slightly nonplussed and grumpy High School principal. Another example of the chopped and screwed character nuances that make the show unique. I get the impression Nucky feels like he's drowning in morons. It makes him weary. Not a raging volatile hothead in the Scarface/Tony Soprano/Johnny Dangerously vein. The snarling at Margaret over the ins and outs of how to appropriately lobby for pre-natal care kindled a rare show of fire from Nucky.
OMD: With Mickey Doyle still puzzlingly alive these four years later, that should be enough dipshittery in the mix to feel like you were drowning in it. Imbecile indeed.
Gyp Rosetti. Quite the intro. Clearly he's a hotheaded fuckmook with a penchant for lashing out at even the slightest hint of disrespect. Think he was an only child? And 500 cases of rum? Even his clientele are douchebags. Drinking fucking mojitos, pretending their Roaring '20s pirates? What worthless piece of shit would need that much rum? Weird rum fact: Apparently it plays a central part in the culture of the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland. I guess if Rosetti is a Newfoundlander or
has exclusive distribution rights to what was then still the autonomous Dominion of Newfoundland I can make an allowance for him needing rum so badly. Otherwise? Shitheel.
WG: But what a glorious shitheel. His thinskinnery was laughable. Johnny Dangerously again (Joe Piscopo as Danny Vermin). The way he busted beans after Nucky dropped the "only selling to one guy bomb" right before midnight was magic. I believe I actually heard the terms "smug kike midget creeping around like a dentist with the ether," "and you, like a breadstick in a bow tie," and my favorite, "I'll shit you out like yesterday's sausage you bog-trotting prick." Somewhere among that flurry of verbal brickbats he referred to Charlie Luciano as "short pants" and suggested he "sit in the corner." I thought he was possessed by Don Rickles. Or Shakespeare. Thank God Regina made it out of the episode alive. I thought for sure Gyp was going to snap her neck and leave her cute and fuzzy dog corpse in Margaret's arms on his way out. And Gyp presaged Paris Hilton's "using a dog as an accessory" gambit by decades.
OMD: It sure looks as though the most corrupt administration to ever take
hold in Washington is about to come crashing down around the soon-to-be deceased Warren Harding. Teapot Dome is heating up. Silent Cal is eight months and two days from taking office from the dead and shamed 28th President. I laughed aloud at the "If Untermyer were the only woodsman" line.
WG: That line was a shade more distinguished than the spreading legs and spreading wings crack he made earlier. But no doubt, Nucky has the angles covered. The Samuel Untermyer referenced was a real-life liberal lawyer bad-ass, who made his bones locking horns with J.P. Morgan, and ultimately played a role in the creation of the Federal Reserve System. As history catches up, he'll get Daugherty in his crosshairs too.
OMD: Much like Mad Men and Downton Abbey, we get our glimpse at the plight of woman. Margaret is treated dismissively left and right in this episode. Her husband is running around on her now, though she sealed that deal when she pissed away his fortune as a fucking tithe. Every doctor is a douchebag to her, despite the fact that SHE FUCKING BUILT THAT HOSPITAL with the highway land dough. Even their manservant is disparaging Carrie Duncan, the aviatrix attempting to cross from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. Methinks feminism comes more and more to the fore this season. What think you?
WG: Absolutely. Interesting arc that connects these three series. And some critics contend Boardwalk Empire is all dressed up with nowhere to go, that it doesn't have anything to say. Bullshit. It's not much of a reach to read plenty into the show. I'd give that type of "it has nothing to say" high-brow dismissal more credence if I'd ever see it laid upon the heads of Family Guy or The Big Bang Theory. Did you catch Nucky's kid Thomas with the shitheel snickering after the manservant made that anti-female pilots crack? Unless Nucky gets shit squared away at home, his kid is going to grow up to be the type of meatwad who ends up with the mantra of Gym, Tanning, Laundry. Thomas and Snooki are bootlegging Four Loko in an alternate universe somewhere.
OMD: Was I alone in erroneously thinking that Lillian Kent was the subject
of "Pictures of Lily?" I later figured out that was Lillie Langtry, who was a Brit. Newcomer Meg Steedle was, um, fetching. Comely.
WG: Gorgeous. Beautiful smile. And a refreshing lack of pretense. Anyone who can get Nucky to Walk Like an Egyptian has to have serious game. References to The Who are my favorite references. The seaside vista is vaguely reminiscent of the setting in Quadrophenia. Nucky is a mod. Harrow is a rocker. Sting is Ace Face.
Can't Hardly Wait
OMD: I never thought I'd say this, but the show misses Jimmy Darmody. I
really didn't want to like Michael Pitt. It felt like he was channeling Ethan Embry's performance in Brotherhood, but eventually it became hard to imagine the show without him. Obviously, he had to pay for his transgressions, and it's Buscemi in the opening credits sequence, not Pitt, but the absence of Jimmy means the absence of the
feuding father/son dynamic that made Season Two so compelling. I assume Nucky will be haunted at having to kill his "son," but there are no signs of such haunting as of yet.
WG: This show has a penchant for erasing its bigger characters, especially the ones played by the "big name" actors. Dabney Coleman. Pitt. William Forsythe. Paul Reiser. Maybe not Paul Reiser. Whacking Darmody leaves a gaping hole in the story line. I'm eager to see how they back fill that one. One thing that leaps out is how fucking beautiful the show is visually. The scene where Manny shot the thief was gorgeous. The shadows in Nucky's hotel room at the end of the episode gave me flashbacks to a decrepit old apartment I used to live in back in college, one that likely hadn't been changed much since the 20s. They have the big budget and it shows.
OMD: Yeah, to me there's no show on television that is more cinematically-inclined than Boardwalk. Think of how much the party scene cost alone. Didn't the pilot cost something like $10 Million to shoot? [I looked it up. $18 Million.] Talk about a rich fucking palette.
WG: What did you make of the scene at the New Year's Eve party when they hauled in Tut's treasure chest? I know it was significant, but I'm not smart enough to suss it out. The well-heeled dug in around that thing like jackals at a kill. The mobsters stood back and looked disgusted. Like they had just seen a Goatse video. Nucky had a mild look of displeasure crease his face. Why were they so shocked to see the 1% go bonkers for a little bling? Did it make them reflective of their own unquenchable greed? You know a variation of that scene took place behind the curtains at the Republican National Convention.
OMD: I think it largely had to do with how disgusting greed looks when the artifice of decorum is stripped away. When greed is laid bare, it is revolting. Seeing these people, who mere moments ago were enjoying a New Year's bash, reduced to ravenous beasts at first sight of free gold serves as a reminder of how quickly we can all be reduced to animals. The first sign of food, and we're pigs to the trough.
WG: Or Pigs on the Wing. Boardwalk Empire via Orwell and Roger Waters.
After the release of two consecutive missteps, doubt began to creep into the collective psyche of filmgoers the world over as to whether they still had it. Joel and Ethan Coen have quieted any agnosticism with a resounding triumph. Owing much to their long-time collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, they have taken Cormac McCarthy's minimalistic brutality and fully reimagined it for their medium.
The sparse nature of McCarthy's writing burns its way through the film; the Coens seemingly holding themselves to Hitchcock's belief that the right image will say much more than any words you can put in the mouths of the actors. This overarching lack of dialogue serves to lend even more credence to what each character does say. When the sporadic use of dialogue is coupled with the complete lack of a score, the result for the Coens is an intrinsically compelling film in which violence dances in and out of the characters' lives indiscriminately, just as it does in reality.
While the argument could certainly be made that the stars of the film could be Roger Deakins' camera and the landscape of West Texas, Southern New Mexico, and North Central Mexico, the Coens have once again managed to cast their film to perfection.
Javier Bardem channels insanity, dispassion, and determinism all at once, beholden to what one can only imagine to be some innate psychopathic code. Every choice Bardem makes is on point, including his much-talked-about hairstyle.
Tommy Lee Jones returns to the desert and scrubland of West Texas (the site of his little-seen directorial masterpiece The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) where it seems as though he's destined to turn in fantastic performances. His wizened visage emotes so much that Joel and Ethan could have probably just trained the camera on his face, not given the character of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell any lines of dialogue, and still gotten every point across they desired. Fortunately, that was not the case, as his character provides the film with its center, heart, and much of its humor. As he and his deputy, Wendell (Garret Dillahunt of Deadwood notoriety), investigate the spree of crimes in their jurisdiction, their banter lightens up what would otherwise be an unrelenting look at an instance of violence devouring everything in the path of a misplaced $2 million.
To ignore Josh Brolin would be an oversight, as his turn as Llewelyn Moss punctuates his triumphant return from a decade of wasting away in mostly irrelevant films. The past year has been kind to him, and in return he gives the public what some would not expect: a resolute, defiant, ordinary man whose opportunism puts him in an extraordinary--and seemingly insurmountable--situation.
As tends to be the norm with the Coen Brothers' films, the supporting roles are well cast, placing the viewer firmly in West Texas of 1980 with each secondary and tertiary fitting the bill of West Texan. Harrelson, Root, MacDonald, Corbin and the aforementioned Dillahunt all excel to name but a few.
Insofar as the story is concerned, complaints about the last quarter of the film seem flawed. The narrative of No Country for Old Men is propelled by one thing: the determination of Anton Chigurh to see his mission to the end. It is driven by his necessity to carry out all of his actions by his code. For the film to have the standard ending would have been a disservice to the singular force that tears through the movie, carving its way through the film and its characters with its jagged blade.
